Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it, follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.

Our rules have been updated and given their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!

Burning Organ: Alright, let's get out there and show these bastards how Team Ratio does things on Earth.Veretas: Ten's moving north. Ramp secure.BYToady: Aedan's reporting clear East.msuitepyon: Rank and I have the south covered.Nartwak: I've got West.

msuitepyon: Goddamn it, what does it take to kill one of these things?Rankenphile: I have a plan.

**Plasma Weapon Discharge**

msuitepyon: Was your plan 'shoot it with a bigger gun'? Because I could have come up with that.Aedan: <*neutral tone*>I.H.N.I.W.T.R.: What it lacks in creativity, it makes up in effectiveness.Rankenphile: I love Plasma.

Veretas: We got him pinned down!Burning Organ: Excellent, keep his attention. I have a plan.BYToady: What kind of plan?Burning Organ: I'm going hit him from the flank.BYToady: What? How?Burning Organ: Same way as last time: I'm going to blow a hole in the wall.

msuitepyon: There's a couple more bodies in the wreckage; looks like Bogey accounted for two in the crash.

I.H.N.I.W.T.R.: That's three in the farmhouse; three in the wreckage, and that first one Rank killed by the Skyranger - that makes seven. You ever hear of more than seven occupants in a craft this size?Veretas: Nah, that's pretty much the limit.msuitepyon: Alright, we're probably done here then. Let's look around to make sure there's nothing else about, but we can probably call this one in as done.One Thousand Dicks: Good. I could use a drink.

Report:
Subsequent investigations into the engagement area revealed that one of the Mutons neutralised (by PFC Rankenphile) was not fatally injured, and instead was merely incapacitated. While capture was successful, survival of the specimen at Ribaldry Base failed owing to the lack of advanced containment facility at that location.

At this time, X-Com scientists have not yet put serious effort towards the re-utilisation of 'retired' soldiers using alien and/or earth-based technologies. This situation is likely to remain until such time as the existing pool of volunteers is exhausted. If and when the list of ready first-time soldiers is depleted, then we will look into the possibility of second-chance soldiers.

UFO-30 was detected in the early hours of Wednesday the 28th of April over the sea of Japan. Less than 24 hours after UFO-29 had been successfully intercepted and neutralised, and the fifth UFO this week. Four in the last four days. Our resources were stretched to capacity.

Lt. Cold Salmon and Hatred was on a shakedown patrol over Siberia at the time; Interceptor-3 had just finished repairs from battling UFO-27 and was on a test flight. Unfortunately, a decision had been made to not perform the test flight with a full load of weapons; Interceptor-3 was on an unarmed patrol and could not provide an armed response to UFO-30.

Nonetheless, Lt. Cold Salmon and Hatred intercepted the alien craft and shadowed it from a distance while armed Interceptors were dispatched from Wubble-Woo base.

Lt. MechMantis made good time across Eurasia; with Lt. Cold Salmon and Hatred stalking the UFO for over an hour, Lt. MechMantis was given excellent updates that were able to lead him straight to the target.

Unfortunately, Interceptor-4 was only able to get off one shot before the UFO accelerated away from both interceptors at high speed. It headed South, towards the South China Sea.

With Interceptor-3 unable to engage and Interceptor-4 operating near the limit of it's maximum engagement range, it wasn't long before both craft were forced to break off.

Fortunately, however, Lt. Bogey had been more conservative in his journey, and while he arrived later, he was able to engage in a limited sortie with UFO-30. Despite the fact that the engagement was occuring over water and the risk that if shot down, the UFO would be unrecoverable, approval was given for Lt. Bogey to attack the craft.

UFO-30 sank in rough seas off the coast of Vietnam. Despite a limited search by military and coastal forces in the area, no wreckage has yet been recovered. At this time, mounting a seabed search and recovery expedition is deemed unfeasible for both political and economic reasons.

The council of funding nations is more or less satisfied with this month's progress in combating the extra-terrestrial menace. Our monthly operating budget has been increased by around $1M, with increases from almost every X-Com member nation.

Only Russia bucked the trend, instead decreasing the level of funding. This was somewhat surprising, so budget and operations reveiw was put together by Dr. Computer Generated Faggotry, breaking down actions and activities into a 'score'.

As you can see from the graph, Alien activity sharply dipped in the month of April, no doubt because of increased X-Com activity. X-Com's performance in keeping Alien activity at background levels this month has been commendable.

For a more detailed insight, the numbers can further be broken down by activities within member nation borders:

Once again, alien activity in X-Com funding nations is largely low this month compared to previous activity. Very little here explains the Russian drop in funding.

However, if you look at the other side of the equation, and instead look at X-Com performance within the borders of member nations, a slightly different trend becomes evident:

Here we can see the root of the issue. While overall, XCom performance has been excellent, within Russian borders X-Com has suffered a number of setbacks. This has caused the Russian authorities to re-evaluate and re-prioritise their defense spending on alternative measures. It will be up to X-Com operations to improve our standing with them again in future.

X-Com scientists made several key break thoughs in the month of april. Dr. Monsterror and Dr. Computer Generated Faggotry helped deliver the plans for a Hyperwave Decoder to decipher alien communication technology earlier in the month, a breakthrough that could very well be as important as the Enigma Code was in during WW2. Specialised Hyperwave detection bunkers are under construction at all three X-Com bases, and should be online in early May.

Further, in the last days of the month, Dr. Zyrelax and Dr. Green concluded the next stage of Alien/Human weapons development:

The Plasma Beam is a vehicle-mounted weapon compatible with X-Com Interceptor weapons systems. It's range, accuracy, lethality and impressive capacity make it the most advanced weapon ever developed on earth. Given our experiences with Alien craft to date, an Interceptor armed with one of these should be able to engage any UFO yet encountered with weapon superiority. X-Com engineering teams under Specialist Goatmon have already begun production for deployment to front-line units during May.